The Puzzle of the BJP’s Muslim Supporters in Gujarat

The Puzzle of the BJP’s Muslim Supporters in Gujarat

Image credit: Hindu CentreRaheel Dhattiwala examines
a political phenomenon in Gujarat: the support of Muslims for the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that many Muslims perceive as responsible
for the brutal violence in the State in 2002 when at least a thousand
Muslims were killed. The findings are based on 23 months of ethnographic
fieldwork — in periods spanning three elections in 2010, 2012 and 2014 —
and an analysis of 101 polling booths in Ahmedabad city.

Are Muslims shedding their resentment for the BJP and voting for it? The potency of this question is greatest in context
of Gujarat where it gained significance soon after the BJP’s political
rapprochement with Muslims in 2009. This report attempts to answer why
Gujarat’s Muslims would support the BJP, a party that many continue to
acknowledge as having perpetrated violence against Muslims in the State
less than a decade ago. In doing so, it examines the profile of the BJP
Muslim supporter and what ‘support’ actually means.

Findings
of this report are primarily based on in-depth fieldwork evidence
spanning three election periods in Ahmedabad city (2010 to 2014).
Indeed, interview evidence suggests an unprecedented surge in public support of Muslims for the BJP in this period. Motivations of support varied for those Muslims who had joined the party as members, from those who were supporters/campaigners for
the party. For Muslim party members, political patronage of a party
deemed to stay in power in the State was a strong incentive to vocally
support the BJP as opposed to value rational incentives for the
supporter/campaigner (“to get rid of our anti-national image we have to
be with the BJP”). Common to both groups of supporters was the effect of
personal experience of the violence. A Muslim with direct experience
(e.g. death of a family member) of the violence in 2002 was least likely to voice support for the BJP.

At the same time,
inferences drawn from 101 polling booths in seven assembly
constituencies in Ahmedabad highlight a distinction between public and
electoral support: more Muslims were likely to have supported the BJP in
public only, than going out and voting for it as well. This is
plausible given that anonymous referendum implies the possibility of
public behaviour being distinct from electoral behaviour.
The sample booth analysis suggests not more than 10 per cent votes were
cast by Muslims for the BJP. This figure is not very different from
Muslim voting for the BJP in Gujarat in the years prior to 2009. Of
course, making ecological inferences from booth-level data has its own
set of caveats, which further highlights the uncertainty of claims—
“over 30 per cent Muslims voted for us”—made by the BJP from
constituency-level aggregate figures.

Contradictory behaviour—high public support but
low electoral support—could be an outcome of the absence of a space for
dissent or a ‘hidden transcript’ for Muslims leading to expressive
dissonance that limits the articulation of true feelings. Plausibly, for
a Muslim who believed that the BJP is an anti-Muslim party, the new
knowledge of the BJP’s inclusive measure to represent Muslims in the
party could be inconsistent with the awareness that the BJP is
anti-Muslim. If this Muslim individual chooses to support the BJP for
potential economic gains expressing his original private belief might
now invite social disapproval from the majority Hindus for opposing an
inclusive government and from his own community for opposing a
government that seeks to make amends and provide benefits. Notably,
public support for the BJP among Muslims had decreased by 2014
advocating the pattern seen in the booth-level findings. The absence of
Muslim representation in the BJP in the 2012 elections and with “no
tangible benefits” the social pressure to conceal misgivings about the
BJP is likely to have reduced.

Although Muslims displayed
far greater public support for the BJP than voting for it, booth-level
data suggests that poor Muslims were more likely to vote for the BJP
than affluent Muslims; Muslims voters living in intermixed neighbourhoods
were more likely to vote for the BJP than those living in
Muslim-majority enclaves and ghettos; and, contrary to fieldwork
evidence, there is little evidence that Muslims in areas without
violence were more likely to vote BJP than were those from areas with
violence. These are, albeit, tentative inferences because the sample is
restricted to homogenous booths and the range on the bounds of voting
overlaps. What it does illustrate is that interview evidence may not
necessarily match behavioural evidence, thus providing good reason to conduct much more systematic booth-level analysis that enables localised inferences.

What are the implications of these findings? First, given the substantive evidence of electorally-motivated
ethnic violence in India, institutional autonomy of the keepers of law
and order ought to be encouraged. Related to the first is the need to
strengthen legal provisions that ensure that the state be held
accountable for future episodes of violence. In absence of legal provisions, ethnic minorities who are not electorally
rewarding will continue to face the dilemma of the Muslim voter of
Gujarat today caught between the need for state resources and their own
moral dissonance. Third, the dependence of electors on political parties
for patronage-based incentives often compels
them to either act as political intermediaries themselves by becoming
members of the incumbent party or rely excessively on intermediaries who
facilitate exchange
of resources between voter and state. Campaigns that educate voters
about the political process, incumbents and candidates could reduce
their dependence on political intermediaries and lead to transparent
voter-politician interface.

This article originally appeared on the website
of the Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy where Raheel
Dhattiwala was a Public Policy Scholar at the time of carrying out her
research. She completed her doctoral studies in sociology from Nuffield
College, University of Oxford.

Update:
Dhattiwala & Susewind (2014) carried out further systematic
analysis of Muslim vote in 2014 in the states of Gujarat and Uttar
Pradesh, the results of which were published in the Economic & Political Weekly.